Nitrate Problem!!! Help!!!

[chrisdamage]

Hey everyone... I've had my BC14 up and running now for about 3 and a half months. I have 14 to 16 lbs. of live rock and a 1" sand bed. I do weekly 30% water changes using Instant Ocean salt and Distilled water I buy in the gallon jugs from Publix. My daily tests of the nitrates, nitrites, alkalinity, and pH have been as follows for the past 3 weeks:

Nitrates: 40ppm
Nitrites: 0ppm
Alkalinity: 240 to 300ppm
pH: 7.8 to 8.0

I have also taken out the sponge in the sump because a guy at my LFS told me that it should help reduce my nitrates. I took it out about a week ago and I havn't noticed a difference yet. Should I take out my Bio balls and replace them with liverock? I'm willing to try anything at this point because it is really begenning to frustrate me. As a side note, I have a true perc, a dottyback, and a blood shrimp as my inhabitants and I only feed them as much as they can eat in a few minutes once a day. Thanks. Any help is greatly appreciated.

[Twitterbait]

ok, try this.

remove the bioballs and replace with... nothing.

add more LR to the tank

do a large 50% WC to your tank

also take a moment and test the water you are getting from the store to make sure it is clean of everything. you never know, it may have nitrates in it.

what kind of skimmer do you have?

[Brocnizer]

COuld be the distilled water. Around here, the distilled water has nitrate in it so I buy RO water from walmart. It says "drinking water" and then under how it was processed it says "reverse osmosis"

So test that water.

I had a nitrate problem and my tank is the same age as yours. Its now down to 5ppm. All I did was reduce feedings, added a little live rock (like 3 pounds), and took out the foam filters in the canister.

[hng]

Update? You might also want to cut the feedings back to every other day.

[Loverotties]

multi WC and removale of the bio balls will help bring them down.

[Rippey]

I have a "@$$ load"plants in my partition to help asorbe unwanted nitrates-rites, ammonia, ect